Friday, 25 September 2015

An
11-person team of Ukrainian cavers were wading through the snow on the way down
from the Arabika massif in the western Caucasus on a January night. They had
just descended the Krubera Cave to a depth of 1710 metres, thus breaking the
world record. As they neared an avalanche zone above the tree-line, they split
into two groups, so that if one was snowed under, the other would be able to
attempt a rescue. Snow thundered down and the youngest member, Anatoli
Povykalo, just 18, was overwhelmed. The others dug him out, unharmed. They
spent the night in the forest, where hundreds of trees had been snapped off a
few metres above the ground. Next day they reached the trail-head and were trucked
out to triumphant receptions in Kiev and Moscow.

Some
months later, I sat with six of the cavers in a garden sixty kilometres south
of Kiev. Hazed sun shone mildly on Alexander Klimchouk’s house in the village
of Grebenyi. Klimchouk is an authority on limestone aquifers and Senior
Scientist of the Geological Institute at the National Academy of the Ukraine.
He is a short, fit man in his early fifties with a dense bandido moustache, a
speaker of lucid English and a fluent interpreter. From the outside his house
looked deserted. One end was half built. A tin chimney poked through a plastic
roof. On the northern gable, a 12 mm perlon rope was hanging, placed there so
the Klimchouk family could practise single-rope technique, ascending and
descending with jumar clamps. Alexander’s son was on the Krubera expedition.

His wife, Natalia, takes children underground from the age of four, including
her own grandson. They go especially to the gypsum caves of Moldova, which are
largely horizontal, and the second-longest system in the world after the
Mammoth Caves in Tennessee. ‘The entrance to them is so tortuous and tight,’
she told me, ‘that we call it Chinese Communist Party.’ Inside the house, in an
upstairs office with a bed in it for me, a caving archive is housed on grey
metal shelves and cabinets. The wooden walls are covered with colour photos of
limestone grottoes and finely printed maps of cave systems wriggling through
the earth like intestines.

The
garden where we sat eating whole salted fish brought by the team and pizzas
baked by Natalia was disheveled end-of-summer. Tired marigolds drooped between
patches of cabbage and salad. In the drought the well had failed, and Alexander
slid twenty feet down in his caving harness to fix the pump. The Dnieper seemed
unaffected by drought: on the way from Kiev Alexander had driven down a rutted
clay track to show me the river. A straggle of bungalows ended in a fine villa,
much better painted and curtained than any other house we passed; a burly
caretaker lurked in a doorway: the British Ambassador’s out-of-town pad. The
river powered slowly past, lazy currents ruffling its dove-grey and pearly
surface.

The banks were thick with trees, with one hut among the bushes on the far side. Alexander likes to paddle across at night in a rubber dinghy and fish for catfish by torchlight. Beyond, the Ukraine stretched away in calm immensity. At the roadsides women offered buckets of earthy carrots and potatoes for sale. The fields are as scruffy as those of central Ireland fifty years ago because nobody has the capital to buy or hire agricultural machinery since the dissolution of the collective farms.I wanted to know the attraction of the black and lifeless world undergound. Klimchouk and his colleagues liked the opportunity to travel, they told me; they enjoyed ‘extreme climbing’, which they had gone in for in the Carpathians when they were students; caving was ‘like geology’; it was romantic camping in the forest at night; it was good to go to absolutely untrodden places; it could be as beautiful underground as anywhere on the surface. Alexander also saw caving in its historical context: ‘Really, in the Soviet time, caving for us was a shelter. And things were well organised. Things were cheaper, and people could not lose their homes. We could make three expeditions to Central Asia. Now when you talk to people you see the dollar signs in their eyes. This bandit capitalism, they don’t do sponsorship. The businessmen throw away thousands in the casino.’ So the Ukrainian cavers set up a company called Paritet (‘Equality’) to carry out repairs on bridges and high buildings. The profits pay for expeditions.

Alexander Klimchouk

The
cavers didn’t interrupt each other. They listened closely, although much of
this must have been mulled over dozens of times. The leader of the
record-breaking team, Yuri Kasian from Poltava, was the spokesman (translated
by Alexander). He was perhaps 35, tall and broad with healthy skin and
introspective blue eyes. ‘Among cavers,’ he said, ‘it is bad form to discuss
the furthest limits too openly. If you bring too much equipment, the cave will
be scared, and stop. So the record was only almost openly discussed.
Alexander had told us it could be a record. First we create a cave in our
imagination.

Then by our efforts we create it to correspond.’ Both he and
Alexander were intent on defining the ethos of caving, its special style and
demands. ‘In mountaineering you know your goal – the peak is on the map. Cavers
have not so much preliminary information – this comes with exploration. So,
when we descend, we have no horizon we are making for – there is only an
apparent horizon.’ The effect on logistics is crucial. If there is no known
terminus, how much gear should be carried? They took 2000 metres of rope and
300 bolts. They also knew that if anything went wrong, they couldn’t be
rescued.

It had
been discovered that there was a continuous channel from the entrance to the
Krubera at 2200 metres above sea level to the eastern shore of the Black Sea.
Fluorescein dye put in at the top had resurfaced a fortnight later in a cliff
spring that fed a rock pool on the Black Sea shore 20 kilometres away. (The
world record is in Turkey, where dye reappeared 130 km away after 366 days.) A
geologist called Kruber was the first to look for caves in the Arabika massif
in the early 20th century. In the 1960s, Georgian cavers found an open-mouthed
shaft and went 60 metres down before they were stopped by a squeeze that looked
impassable. In the 1980s and 1990s Klimchouk’s team spent three seasons, with
six people working every day for four weeks each year, attempting to force
their way down between the jammed rocks and the wall of the shaft. The blockage
went on for a hundred metres. ‘It was really terrible. The water trickling down
is at 1.5° Celsius. We were drilling and planting charges for hours, day after
day. For it to work, you must drill the hole in exactly the right place, then
plug it thoroughly.’

By the
autumn of 2000, ‘we clearly heard the “call of the abyss” and sensed the smell
of extreme depth.’ They had reached 1410 metres and could feel no draught: it
looked like a dead end. Removing the fixed ropes on his way up, Yuri found a
crack leading to a passage that meandered, blocking the light from his torch.
Might this be a way further down? They decided on a winter expedition, when
everything above would be frozen and the waterfalls would have dried up. The
cave mouth is on a ridge of mountain where rocks crop out above valleys of wild
grass. Here in summer shepherds carry Kalashnikovs left over from Georgia’s war
of independence from Russia, in case they have to use them in aid of Abkhazia’s
current struggle for independence from Georgia.

It’s a dangerous place: as the
cavers waited to cross into Abkhazia, among rooting pigs and cars with bootfuls
of tangerines for sale, everyone assumed that they were drug smugglers.
Finally, on 28 December the cavers were put down on the high snowfield by
helicopter, and began digging out the entrance with shovels. In the unedited
black and white film of the expedition, someone shouts, ‘Jump on it!’ when the
caked snow won’t collapse. Two days later they brought in the millennium with
champagne and fireworks. Five days of hard work followed, spidering down into
the darkness of the big vertical pitches,wriggling through hundreds of metres of fairly level passageway. The rock was so sharply sculpted that it tore their boots.

A photograph shows Yuri and his
wife Julia Timoshevskaya sitting in their nylon igloo tent, cooking and reading
by the light of their carbide lamps, content in their frail bubble of blue
fabric which glows like a lantern in the horned and groined imprisonment of the
rock. ‘It was a dream cave, ideal,’ Yuri said.

‘What I like is lots of vertical
pitches and as few meanders as possible. We found no great difficulties, just
plenty of technical work, which is a pleasure for cavers.’ He came over as
wonderfully cool. Describing a long abseil in the neighbouring cave, the
Kubishevskaya, he said: ‘We were in the cosmos – in total darkness, rotating.
It abolished fear, because there was no visible bottom to pitches, wriggling through hundreds of metres of fairly level passageway.

I could
imagine, dimly, what this must have been like from my own experiences
underground. I once crawled and downclimbed to the foot of the enormous chamber
called Gaping Ghyll inside Ingleborough in Yorkshire, and stood on the shingle
of a shallow river looking at the hole down which you can be winched by the
Bradford Caving Club each Whitsun week. It is far higher above your head than a
cathedral roof. A full moon was shining, making icy shimmers on the cascade
that fell in pulses onto the stones at our feet. Quite different was a struggle
into the other flank of Ingleborough, through a route called Millipede Crawl in
Southerscales Pot.

The rock roof angled lower and lower. We walked crouching.
We began to creep along on our knees. Sharp fallen stones bit into our legs. At
the terminus we stood up inside a bell of rock, and looked down into a
perfectly circular sump of perfectly still, perfectly black water.

In the
great dark atrium in the Kubishevskaya, Yuri had walked for three hours round
the edge of the chamber before realising that it might be very difficult to
find the hanging rope-end which was his only way back out. When they reached a
depth of 1710 metres in the Krubera, the cavers were dangling above a lake and
had to throw a spare rope for some time before they managed to reach a beach.
They could feel no draughts and boulders plugged all the visible exits, so they
had to conclude that this was the end of that particular route.

There may
be other ways to penetrate still lower in the Arabika. For the time being,
however, the Ukrainian cavers are concentrating on a new possibility, in the
Aladaglar massif in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey. A difficult, even
dangerous place, either above or below ground, it is also very beautiful. In
one of their photographs of the mountainside, three white cascades burst and
pour from three mouths all level with each other. The water enters the ground
two thousand metres above, so there is a possibility of a new record descent
here.

On the
drive back to Kiev, Nikolai Soloviov, a veteran of 17 Arabika expeditions,
curled up in the closed car boot to make room for me, and then climbed out in
town grinning. He and Yuri showed me the old town where Bulgakov lived in an
ornate brick house now adorned with a big black cat with a pink spotted
bow-tie. We finished up in McDonald’s, the first in the Ukraine, opened in the
1990s to queues of thousands. It was my birthday, although I kept this to
myself.

On the
way to the airport we passed two cows on the motorway verge, herded by two
women in drab coats and headscarves, wearing boots and talking hard to each
other. Road-signs pointed to Kharkov and other places I remember from the war
maps on which my brother and I drew red arrows in 1942 to plot the Nazi Army’s
push for the Baku oilfields. One of the last trucks I saw before we turned off
was from Barrow in Furness, 15 miles from where I live.

Friday, 18 September 2015

There are two ways to gain the area known as Easter Island
and whilst one presents difficulties that might only be overcome by hard core
boulderers or those prepared to swim when the relatively easy sea level
traverse below main cliff suddenly peters out, the other- although more
conventional- is nevertheless not without hazard. Gaining its name on account
of some massive freestanding blocks a short distance down an initial descent
gully which with some imagination bear resemblance to the carved heads of their
Polynesian counter parts. These quartzite cubes can be identified after
descending a less distinct path a short distance beyond departure for Wen Slab.
Gearing up by The Heads, the next section, particularly when glistening with
dew, has on occasion proved severe enough in its gripping insecurity inclined
at an uncomfortable angle with mud footholds, to force some teams back up the malevolent
slope before setting out retrospective rappel anchors or simply abandoning the
process and going somewhere else.

Easter Island: Photo John Redhead

If however the hand of success has smiled
then a narrow rocky promontory is reached, from where a thirty metre abseil gains sea washed rocks before the fabulous super crack, E2, to act as a
landing pad from which it is possible to explore the surrounding zawns which
contain routes on excellent rock.Golden quartz streaked and white with thin
cracks like Neutrino 6a, deep overhanging chimneys like Ormuzd E4 and grooved
walls rising majestically straight from the sea, E1, and some way to the left
when looking from a canoe, Tumbling Dice, a Jim Moran E3, all bearing an
unmistakable quality trade mark.

In a narrowness opposite the promontory from which the ab is
conducted, few climbers could fail to notice two striking crack lines and whilst
the right hand fissure diagonals into a horizontal quartz rail, joining the
arête is Phagocyte, HVS. The central thinner incursion running the impending
wall’s full length in lightning strike style with an overhang at maybe three
quarters height, is Wonderwall. It was for this prize that Laurie Holliwell came
in April 1969 with Dave Potts. Usually partnered with his brother Les but this
time with another of the London based team they would drive the A5 at breakneck
speeds in order to make the Padarn by last orders on Friday evenings before
climbing all weekend. Invariably repeating the process throughout the year
except when venturing to the Alps or Dolomites on midsummer holidays. In this
sense they were the forerunners of a tradition later taken up by Mick Fowler
often with Mike Morrison or Al Baker who would also come from the south with a
zeal for adventure and a legacy of serious routes such as Heart of Gold on left
hand Red Wall in 1978, on Death Trap 1982, also E5 in Mousetrap Zawn, showed that
they did not fall short of finding it.

Home on the Range:The author talks down to George Smith:Photo Tony Loxton

In 1969 armed with some pegsand perhaps other rudimentary nuts and slings, generally inadequate for
the task ahead, Laurie set off on Wonderwall much to Dave Potts’s amazement,
“It looked preposterous to me: it wasn’t as if he was making for anything, just
more overhanging rock”. Laurie was firing up cracks and flakes which did appear
to close out, so thin once in the short groove barred by overhangs, that it made
the climb look impossible from below. Never easy the initial section does
however succumb to forceful jamming and hauling by which climbers au fait with
these burly techniques can gain benefit. Somehow overcoming the awkward
predicament which the tight groove had forced upon him, Laurie got a peg under
the overlap then another out on the right wall from which, with aid, he was
able to grasp what ‘Smiler’ Cuthbertson would later refer to as “ A Golden Wonder flake”, and semi laybacking its edge was able to continue on improving
holds. Perhaps in the same way that he’d been caught in action on Park Lane in
Ken Wilson’s iconic photo.

Wonderwall thus entered the psyche of the Gogarth cognoscenti,
magnificent in line this fifty metre masterpiece boxed in Easter Island’s
atmospheric ruggedness had by the early 1970s gathered a reputation as a mean
strength sapping stamina test which had subsequently rejected many suitors in
their desperate quest at aid reduction, including Alan Rowse who after slumping
onto the peg concluded “ I knew I had become a mountaineer”. Alex Sharp then a
student at Bangor University who would write the next Gogarth guide eleven
years after Crews’ original 1966 version was the eventual all free leader of
Wonderwall which he completed with Hank Pasquill in 1974.

Photo: Tony Loxton

Shortly after Alex’ s
guide came out there was a blitz on Gogarth the next year in 1978 which also
saw climbers armed with friend protection for the first time, the almost
perfect protection device for Gogarth podded cracks and fins. Championed by Al
Evans, Jim Moran and Geoff Milburn amongst others many fine routes were added
all over the cliffs yet at its end even this onslaught left much untouched
ground including a direct version of Wonderwall which after an ascent of the
original route seemed at least worth considering.

In good conditions I had noted that a climber in reasonable
fitness with strong calves was able to maintain a semi rest position in
Wonderwall’s slim groove under the overhang. From here it would surely be
possible, barring bad rock, to probe over the roof searching for holds on which
to pull over and, if lucky, place some micro wire protection in the form of
tiny brass headed RPs that had for the last few years complemented Friends as
revolutionary protection devices. Although due to their small size they never
inspired as much confidence as a good Friend placement they nevertheless
sufficed in hairline cracks where previously such features were deemed unprotectable.
Familiar with finding suitable slots form many successful and unsuccessful
slate episodes I figured Wonderwall’s extension might be better suited to ‘eat’
these mini lifesavers than soft parallel sided slate. No amount of speculation
could prove if this was so and thus resolving to at least peer over the roof it
was inevitable that this plan would at some point be galvanized into action.

George Smith and Martin Crook doing the bizz:Photo Tony Loxton

Although the summer of 1985 counted as little more than an
unfortunate washout, Johnny Dawes had arrived on the Welsh scene by autumn and
in 1986 was poised for meteoric reign not only on slate and Cloggy but also out
at Gogarth and anywhere else for that matter there were tiny holds to cling.
Thus the Llanberis dojo once again buzzed with expectation and many fine
climbers influxed the locals to pump up the volume. If nothing came of
proposals first ventured in pub talk by one half of the team failing to
rendezvous next morning, it was hardly cause for concern since in a game akin to
musical chairs those remaining keen simply went to Pete’s café, hung around for
a while then after a meeting where the joint chiefs sat at the magic table
discussing the days business, usually found themselves marching over slate
footpaths bound for the quarries, or as unsuspecting passengers gripping tight
in the back of the Dawes' Rascal van as it hurtled head long round blind bends
and over humped backed bridges as if chasing the future on its way to Gogarth,
up the pass, or Trem.

In the general melee Craig Smith had beamed down from
Yorkshire, responsible for such slate enthrallment as Gin Palace in Vivian
Quarry Craig would later in august partner Dawes on what most commentators
would class as Gogarth's route of the year, Conan the Librarian, the obvious
bottomless hanging groove which carves through the left hand side of the great
sea arch opposite Wen slab which many had eyed but few had tried. Initially the
top pitch had required an aid point but returning shortly afterwards a space
walking horror in the form of Janitor finish was found at an equally terrifying
version at E7. Before these events unfolded Craig had accompanied me in further
exploring Easter Island during which he was to find intense technical
challenges in the form of Boil all Irishmen E5 6b which follows incipient nano cracks
in Hombres conspicuous right wall. The name being coined on the spur of a
moment and refers to one Irishman in particular, who well known at the time
acted as a sort of inebriated Llanberis Fagin.

Big George hanging out on Angelsey: Tony Loxton

Prone to making outrageous
claims as to his climbing prowess, his only known Gogarth encounter ended
barely ten metres from its beginning when, having descended part way down the
aforementioned Easter Island gully the fear had come hard upon him and it was
not until Stevie Haston, who he had gone to watch, emerged an hour or so later
to effect kindly rescue that the Irishman’s ordeal came to a close. In his
favour it must be said the Cuban heeled cowboy boots of the type worn by line
dancers are not the most suitable footwear for over sea Gogarth descents. Also
known as The Sex Lobster because of his reddish countenance it seemed only fair
that we should immortalise him after swinging leads on the less difficult than
it looks E3 arête spiralling down Super crack’s left wall termination. Marvellously
exposed, the ‘Lobster’ was a route that the Irishman would later claim to have
accompanied us on, and in some ways perhaps he had.

Anyone who has spent time climbing traditional routes will
know there are two factors involved which influence the chosen routes outcome.
One is the placing of runners and two is the actual movement upwards or
sideways when facing technicalities as displayed by geological features on the
rock face. Reasonable enough on paper the problem on more than rudimentary
ascents is that it is very easy to become utterly pumped form placing runners
especially if the correct size is not chosen first or second try. You could of
course forget about a rack and tackle any given route solo, yet, as this was not
my intention when setting off up Wonderwall,
I was aware that any misplacements might easily result in retreat
without even getting to venture on the proposed Dirrectissima.

Thus in June
1986 suspended from hand jambs after placing two good Friends on the
introductory cracks I looked down to see Craig belaying slightly to seaward as small
waves rushed towards the Zawn back then disappeared on outward pull somehow
controlled by the moon. Pacing the crack and soon entering groove territory
aiming for wedged shoulder semi rest, I
became comfortable enough to clip an old peg then place some back up gear in
the form of some welded in rock placements. Definitely good enough to hold a
fall. Reaching over the roof’s apex and placing RP one and two about six inches
apart, I noticed a sort of goblin eye pocket above the overhangs left wing. The
awkward overlap now forced me chest backwards as if straining against a
powerful frontal storm, yet holds such as could be found above, although small,
allowed uncompromising moves to gain a strenuous standing pose weighted mostly
on the left foot beyond the overlaps wings.

While John Redhead hangs out a dead crow.:JR Collection

Reaching for the RPs I swiftly
gained two good placements in the head wall seam and also gained the first of
excellent fins which despite the steepness could be exchanged for footholds. Chalking them first so as not to miss,at least they became amorphous, amongst the
slightly sea grassed white wall. Pausing for a moment on the better holds there
came some noise from the promontory which was now peopled by Trevor Carlos
Hodgson and Skinny Dave shouting encouragement.

Had they arrived twenty minutes earlier they may have gained
great amusement by watching the struggling leader scuffle to gain footholds in
the eye pocket but as it was saw him set up for a final run, slings on flakes
and ears, coming and going as Craig paid out, the nines in time honoured ritual,
and I reached belay points whilst the great inanimate heads looked out to
Ireland still a rope length away. ‘I wonder why’ they had seemed to say in the
metaphysical void of their silent voices. Later any notions entertaining
philosophic thought were soon impaled by urgent hunger, andas if as a reality check, after entering the
tiger’s den of Holyhead where architects had not been kind and people endured,
local girls out hunting for husbands on a Saturday night, traffic light gnarly
in karaoke death masks not being complementary about our lurid attire. “Don’t
think much of yours” they had said to each other laughing.

Friday, 11 September 2015

Harold Drasdo, who died in hospital in Bangor, North Wales, last
week after a short illness, was in the vanguard of the remarkable post war
ascendency of working class Northern English rock climbers. Activists from the
great Northern cities who challenged the previously entrenched dominance held
by the middle class professionals who in the main, had had the field to
themselves before the war.

Born in Bradford in 1930, Harold and his younger brother
Neville, like so many northern activists, began their climbing careers by
exploring the local Yorkshire crags and quarries. Inspired by fellow Bradfordian, the legendary Arthur
Dolphin, they soon began to look to the mountain areas of the Lake District,
North Wales, Scotland and notably Ireland, where the challenges of the hardest
routes of the era were accepted and first ascents began to fall.

As a leading light of the loose affiliation of Bradford born
climbers known as ‘The Bradford Lads’ Harold began to rack up the number of
first ascents in the Lake District with routes like North Crag Eliminate,
Grendal, Anarchist and Sostenuto amongst his classic collection.

Despite mainly
climbing within his Bradford circle, there was a friendly rivalry and cooperation
with climbers from other clubs like the Manchester Rock and Ice club-of Brown
and Whillans fame- and the rival Alpha Club. Activists from all over the north
would arrive each weekend- wage slaves
on Monday-Free men on Sunday- to share the same dosses, barns and huts in the
main climbing arenas. Swopping tales of gnarly first ascents, irate shotgun
wielding landowners and hinting at recently discovered unclimbed crags of rich
potential!

Bradford Lads...and Lasses in Langdale. Photo Neville Drasdo

In the early 1950’s, Harold and brother Neville became the
first British climbers to explore the great unclimbed cliffs of The Poisoned
Glen, in Donegal in the far west of Ireland. At the time, Donegal really was
the back of beyond and it took a great deal of planning and effort to just get
there. However, their reward was several first ascents on the beetling 1000’
cliffs. Their activity piquing the interest of top British climbers like Chris
Bonington and Allen Austin who came over and made their own mark on the cliffs.

Towards the end of the fifties- Harold who had trained as a
teacher and was by now working as an outdoor instructor in a Peak District
outdoor activities centre- took on the authorship of the Fell and Rock Club’s
first climbing guidebook to Buttermere and the Far Eastern Fells. A daunting
undertaking for someone who usually had to hitch-hike between some of the
remotest crags in the Lake District in all weathers and often had to solo the
climbs due to a lack of willing partners.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, as working class British
climbers began to find the ways and means to extend their orbit to the
continent, his explorations included trips to the Alps, the USA and Spain. It
was while climbing in the Alps with amongst others the legendary Scottish
climber Jimmy Marshall, that he met tragedy when a member of the party was
killed during an abseil descent and on another occasion, he returned from a
successful ascent to discover that Bradford hero and inspiration, Arthur
Dolphin had been killed on a neighbouring mountain. His attendance with a
handful of fellow English climbers at Dolphin’s funeral was movingly described
in his autobiography, The Ordinary Route’.

In the early sixties he had secured a position as warden and
chief instructor at The Towers Outdoor Pursuits Centre in Capel Curig within
the Snowdonia National Park and had married his lifetime partner, Maureen with
whom he had worked at an outdoor centre in the High Peak. He was to remain in
North Wales for the rest of his life. Despite his demanding full time position,
his spare time was still spent climbing and exploring the cliffs of north
Wales, with first ascents like Traditional Route and Plato’s Cave falling to
his advances. During this period he had continued to write articles and essays
for magazines and journals. Usually works of rare quality and insight, for within
a sport which boasts a disproportionate number of cerebral participants, Harold was a true
intellectual, refined scholar and a first rate mind. Someone for whom the Greek
classics and works of politics and philosophy were devoured as enthusiastically
as the latest climbing guidebooks.

During this period in the late sixties and early seventies,
Harold was working on the Climber’s Club guidebook to Lliwedd. He became the first guidebook writer to pen
guides for both the Fell and Rock and the Climber’s Club. His guide published
in 1971 was-he liked to boast-the slowest selling guide in guidebook history, taking
30 years to sell out! However, for the uninitiated, the grim, vegetated 1000’
Welsh cliff did see it’s heyday in the Edwardian era and had long since been
considered an esoteric venue. The previous authors, Archer Thomson in 1909 and
Menlove Edwards in 1936 had both committed suicide by poisoning. Happily Harold
survived ‘the curse of Lliwedd’ and lived on into old age.

In this period he authored the highly influential’
‘Education in the Mountain Centres’ A work which emphasised the positive value
of teaching young people to appreciate and value the natural environment whilst
using its natural resources as an arena for learning outdoor skills and
appreciating it’s fragile beauty. A message which was remarkably prescient at
the time.

By the end of the 70’s he had jointly edited ‘The Mountain
Spirit’- with US climber and academic, Michael Tobias. The work was an
anthology of writings based on philosophical and spiritual interpretations
which writers throughout the ages had placed on the global mountain environment.

After retiring from his role at The Towers he and Maureen
threw themselves into rebuilding their smallholding home high above the market
town of Llanrwst. A beautiful elevated abode which looked out over the spectacular Northern Snowdonia
mountains. With more free time on his hands, he continued to write-finishing
his autobiography ‘The Ordinary Route’ - published by Ernest Press in 1997- and
explore the crags of north Wales. By the mid nineties-and now in his mid
sixties- he began a climbing love affair with the sprawling south Snowdonia
mountain of Arenig Fawr. A peak which had never had a chronicled climbing
history and more interestingly, a mountain which had inspired a unique
Edwardian art movement- ‘The Arenig School’-ledby leading lights, Augustus John and James Dickson Innes.

Over a short period he established around two dozen first
ascents on the cliffs of Arenig and continued to establish new routes on
previously unclimbed cliffs in remote parts of Snowdonia.

After undergoing a hip operation in his early seventies, his
climbing career began to wind down although he still got out into the hills
regularly. With the demands of keeping on top of a smallholding becoming more of
a thankless chore than pleasure, he and Maureen retired from the country life
and settled in the historic north Wales coastal town of Conwy.

One of Harold's last climbs;The verdant Canyon Rib in Aberglasllyn Pass

A lifelong political
anarchist and environmentalist, Harold’s attraction to the movements were based
on an intellectual affinity to progressive ideals and a natural distaste for
top down governance. He had penned a number of articles over the years for
political journals based on his beliefs. As the new century progressed, his
outdoor essays and articles became rarer and were generally limited to club
journals.

Suffering a series of niggling health problems in his latter
years, his activities by now, were restricted to less demanding coastal walks
and his nightly visit to his local pub. It was after suffering a fall outside
his local that complications quickly set in and he died a few days after being
admitted to hospital. He leaves behind a rich legacy of rock climbs, writings
and of course the gratitude of thousands of youngsters who had thrived through
his enlightened approach and instruction in outdoor education. He is survived
by his wife Maureen.

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To Hatch a Crow

Welcome to footless crow- Croeso i Bran di-droed

Footless Crow aims to provide the best in British outdoor writing in a unique 'blogazine' format. Offering new articles and republishing classic articles from the past which have been cherry picked from UK climbing/outdoor magazines and club journals. In this I am pleased to have received the support of many of the UK's top outdoor writers who see Footless Crow as a perfect medium to air unpublished works and see old works republished in a format which was inconceivable when they were first written!As a non commercial media,the blogazine acknowledges the contribution that publications like Loose Scree and The Angry Corrie have made in the world of mountain literature. Providing accessible quality writing through a low cost 'zine' format. Footless Crow hopes to emulate these publications by also providing content which is unashamedly traditional and celebrates the finest virtues of British mountaineering!

All published works and photographs have been fully approved by the authors who of course retain copyright. The usual rules and restrictions of copyright apply.Hope you enjoy the content which aims to provide a new extended article each week. If you have any comments or would like to contribute something which fits in with the 'Footless' concept then email me at ......

footless_crow@aol.co.uk

* Since late 2011, the site has changed from a structured weekly article based format to a less formal arrangement which will see climbing and occasionally,eco news,art features and reviews appearing alongside articles.

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Why 'Footless Crow' ?

Footless Crow is a seminal rock climb in the Lake District of Northern England. It was the creation of legendary British climber Pete Livesey-1943-1998. Livesey was one of the new breed of climbers who eschewed the traditional laid back, fags and booze, ethic prevalent at the time and instead pursued a rigid training regime designed to increase his physical and mental attributes to the extent that he could push British climbing to new technical standards. In effect he was one of the first UK rock athletes.Footless Crow was a breakthrough climb which at the time was the hardest climb in the Lakes at E5-6c (US 5-13a). Currently E6-6c due to a flake peeling off.First climbed as an aid route by 50's Lakes legend, Paul Ross and then called -The Great Buttress-. Livesey's much rehearsed test piece was finally led on the 19th April,1974 to the wide eyed astonishment of the UK climbing community. One well known climber was said to have hung up his climbing boots after witnessing the ascent !The name Footless Crow was a brilliant piece of imagination from Livesey who claimed that as there was almost nowhere on the route where he could rest he had to hop about like a footless crow.

So now you know.

In 1976 I saw Ron Fawcett, rock-master since the middle Seventies, on the second ascent of Footless Crow in Borrowdale, then the hardest climb in the Lake District – 190 feet of overhanging rock without a resting-place. When his second called up, ‘What’s it like?’ he answered, ‘An ’orrendous place – Ah’m scared out of me wits,’ as he leaned way back on his fingertips, relaxing as comfortably as a sloth under a branch.